The Ross Lane Fan Club, a Web site dedicated to news, gossip and sexual innuendos about Northwestern sports, thinks Lane, an NU wide receiver, is “superduper sexy.”
But the lanky, 6-foot-3 Lane, who has dark eyes and perfect white teeth, isn’t as hot on his fan club.
“I really forgot about it after the first day I found out about it,” said the freshman, whose dark hair was wet and tousled after being scrunched below a helmet during practice.
“There are some things on that site that could be offensive to some people in the program, and I don’t really want to have anything to do with that. People tell me it’s got to be flattering – it’s kind of flattering, but at the same time, it’s weird.”
The site was created by a self-described group of, “sexy straight women and hot gay guys (but mainly hot gay guys) with an arguably unhealthy obsession with Northwestern football and basketball.” The club’s goal, said a site spokesman, is to bring some much-needed tongue-in-cheek, sexually laced humor to NU sports.
“We like to play with people’s concepts of masculinity and play with sexual-orientation questions,” said the spokesman, who requested to remain anonymous. He contacted the DAILY from a restricted number.
Although Lane was unimpressed with his new following, other members of the Wildcats football squad said the site was hilarious.
“Pretty much everyone on the team has seen it and everyone gets a kick out of it,” said punter Ryan Pederson. “It just shows that we have some real dedicated fans.”
When informed that a recent blurb on the site said that members of the club “marveled” at Pederson’s “sexiness,” the blonde junior broke into an easy smile.
“I didn’t know that.” he said. “Sounds good to me.”
Offensive lineman Austin Matthews said he thought the site was funny – until he was featured on it. A detailed posting stated that “there’s something really hot about the name ‘Austin’ and he has a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ quality about him.”
“It was funny when I was making fun of people and I wasn’t on there, but now I’m the one they crack jokes on,” said Matthews, a towering 285-pound sophomore with the massive shoulders of, well, an offensive lineman.
The site, which has been live for a little more than a week, has averaged about 500 visitors a day. Some of that traffic may be the result of a Nov. 10 blog posting on Outsports.com, a Web site for gay sports fans and athletes, that mentioned the Ross Lane Fan Club. The club’s spokesman said that, as result of the Outsports posting, the Fan Club had received e-mails from gay students at other universities who were interested in creating similar sites.
There are only a “handful” of members in the “exclusive” fan club, but the spokesman said there’s an easy way for other NU students to join in the fun: The site, he said, is always looking for more funny stories and juicy gossip about Wildcat athletes.
As the football season winds down, the fan club’s attention will turn toward the NU basketball team. But ballers be warned: Although the fan club admits to having a “Croation fetish” for senior forward Vedran Vukusic, they don’t think much of the rest of the squad.
The Cats, the spokesman said, are “not a particularly beautiful basketball team.”
Reach Becky Plevin at [email protected].
